It was a legal arm's length away in Chengdu, China, run by a goliath called Hon Hai Precision Industry, a Taiwanese company that's become one of the world's biggest employers and contract manufacturers.

(Since the expression Hon was itself a private joke, this book was long published in the United States as Daughters and Rebels until, in 2004, The New York Review of Books resuscitated the original title with — interest declared — an introduction by your humble servant.)